


Riptide

by oceansinmychest



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: F/F, Flash Forward, Flashbacks, One Shot, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 06, Vignette, past & present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 08:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15360111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: (n.)  rip, tide-rip a stretch of turbulent water in the sea, caused by the meeting of currents or abrupt changes in deptVera retreats to the place she considers herself safest, but the past carries a familiar haunt.





	Riptide

**Author's Note:**

> Listening to Devics' "Salty Seas" heavily inspired this fic. The past will be indicated through italics. The present takes place after 06x05: Bitter Pill.

> “I'm not saying that  
>  I felt like you cared  
>  I'm not saying that  
>  I want to go back.”  
>  _Salty Seas_ – Devics
> 
> “The crime can’t be undone. There is no morally superior position in relation to it. That morality is exactly betrayal.” -  _Convention_ , Laura Moriarty

She goes to a place where no one can harm her. There’s no sense in regression, in going back, but she’s a creature of habit looking for comfort and familiarity. Having made the trek to St. Kilda, the beach resurrects childhood memories of Vera Simone Bennett and her father – a shadow figure – walking along the shore, past the palm trees, before he left. Before he died.

From the pier, Arthur Bennett once told his young, impressionable daughter that she could see the penguins. He raised her up. His face was etched out. She was four. How much could she possibly remember?

Lined with petty amusements, she makes a beeline toward the shoreline, past the buzzing combination of tourists and locals. She takes off her navy-colored thongs which dangle from two fingers until they fall near a crumbling castle.

In a v-neck tee, she couldn’t bring herself to wear a swimsuit. Never a bikini, always a one piece. She lacks the confidence and wears the guilt after choking down a bitter pill. Messy hair’s pulled back into a loose ponytail, frizzy around the temples. The harsh sun scorches the nape of her neck; fire licks her freckled shoulders. There are worse fates than burning alive.

Reflected in Vera’s eyes was a troubled light.

Vera finds a spot away from everyone. She kicks shells and pebbles out of her way. Flat on her bum, she plops down. The heels of her palm trace the man-made grooves in the sand. Her hands wrap around her knees, as sullen as an admonished child. She listens to the rush of water in an effort to soothe her soul.

She ponders when she first began to stray from the straight and narrow path. She sought a life of convenience, of self-preservation. Closing her eyes, Vera pictures all the versions of herself that she has lost sight of. Right suddenly becomes wrong.

_Vera paid no heed to the sleek, cold thing in the distance. A midnight vehicle slept in the parking lot, shiny and new and undeniably belonging to the Governor._

_From behind, she appeared like a dark messenger; her body blotted out the sun. Joan had a habit for being an apparition. The Governor held up an umbrella as black as night to shield herself from the vengeful sun._

_“You weren’t home. I knocked on your door,” she stated in a matter-of-fact, robotic tone._

_“I... didn’t want to be.”_

**_You found me anyway._ **

_Sinewy arms encompassed her knees, the way she used to do as a child. Vera felt the shade rapidly approaching and that presence consuming her – stifling and electric like midnight desire. Wicked things attracted one another, no better than flies to rot and over-ripened fruit._

_"Hm.”_

_Vera looked to the amber sky and wished it was raining._

_Frazzled strands of hair fell into her face. She huffed and puffed, but couldn’t blow them away. She felt a sneer though Vera knew it to be a phantom image._

_Glancing over a shoulder, her teeth struck her bottom lip in the way a thumb meets a lighter. Death’s hair was drawn back in a tight bun, strewn with grey, and secured in place by pungent hairspray. A peacoat hugs her generous curves. Drawn out like a benevolent force, Joan Ferguson had a penchant for being both everywhere and nowhere._

_“What are we, Joan?”_

_It was a question bound to detonate._

_She avoided the mask on that pale, ivory face, choosing to stare at the low tide, stretched far beyond her sad eyes._

_Perhaps Joan’s presence was a testament to her “generous” soul._

 Back again, she seeks solace in the strangest places. While her elbows rest on her knobby knees, her hands cup her cheeks. Sand sticks to her body. The tiny grains are hell-bent on exfoliating the worn soles of her feet.

Director Channing leaves without a trace, a ghost removed from the cog in the machine. With his recent dismissal, she thought her life would be easier. It’s not. Her hollowed out womb aches and twists in a serpentine dance.

Polished into the enemy, Vera didn’t want to wage war. 

Her feelings for Joan are complicated. It seems easier to fault her for every fucked-up thing, because she was - _is_ \- a fucked up person. A schemer, a torturer, an abuser, a villain.

The lump in her throat tightens. A sad case of vertigo plagues her. She waits until it passes; the water calls to her.

_“Vera, you **are** important to me.” Joan insisted despite the strain that riddled her smoky voice. It sounded redundant to repeat herself. So, she reached out. Reached down. Patted her right hand’s shoulder. “You’re my—” _

_Good dog._

_Insulted, Vera shrugged off the gesture. Her brows furrowed. She felt her mentor recoil, as if she’d been stung from such a tactless move across the board. She inhaled, her chest threatening to combust her small body. The Governor does this - **did** this - time and time again. Joan asserted her control over Vera, over the woman she had arguably been closest to._

_Trust unraveled. All expectations had been worn down and weathered. As a savant for justice, Joan had grown mad with power. She fed her dead water. Nothing new._

_Womanly steel didn’t budge. Joan’s shadow moved for her. She was a severe blackguard who ruled over her keep. Vera had believed in the magic of love just to be lied to, coerced, and manipulated._

_Heels sunk into the ground, the gesture a timeless one. She let the sand get everywhere. Each grain contaminated her. Filled her scuffed shoes. Crept into her pockets, her jacket, her hair. She tasted the grit of it. Mother Nature was trying to deliver a message or maybe it was a false sign._

_“You’re a bad person,” she fires back._

_She cupped it in her hand and hollowed out the earth. Vera peered at the hole as if it beckoned to her whispering, “here is your grave.”_

_Was it just the bright light or is Joan’s bun beginning to unravel? Her black eyes appeared wild. The right twitched._

_“Now, Vera, there’s no reason to be holy. Your actions served a purpose for the greater good.”_

_Joan’s voice crawled across the shore. In retaliation, the deputy governor guffaws._

_Mum she couldn’t mourn. It was the old Vera that left a hole in her soul._

_Poison or not, she preferred Joan’s guidance. She had to go and bite the hand that feeds. From Vera’s fear to Joan’s disgust, the little mouse learned to adapt. Her Dante had found that venom irresistible. Joan’s wagging tongue had loosened her limbs and yet, she let Jake in._

Now standing, she wades into the water without a pocketful of stones. Her hesitant toes dip into the clammy, cool body of water. The waves hit and run, ebb and flow, come and go. Foolishly, she let herself be fed praise and the right of action. The deceitful, little mouse has lost her way: she has no stars, no wolves, to guide her. In anger, she kicks at the timid waves which create an awful splash.

Collusion, Governor Bennett realizes, is such a dirty word. They’re both crooked. At least Vera can admit it now.

Even though it isn’t cold, she shivers. Her teeth chatter.

Loving anyone that wasn’t Joan would’ve been easier. Vera expected the quick-witted, simplistic sentences of a paperback romance. Had she chosen a man, the story would’ve been a sellout.

Sullenly, she spies her distorted, pale reflection in the water. The dark circles underneath her eyes take a toll. She looks older than middle-aged.

Vera wades in deeper.

To her knees.

Hyper-focused on a single scene that encapsulates the essence of Vera Bennett: all or nothing.

_A devotee listened to her charlatan, but she still had questions._

_“How do you live with yourself?” Vera asked a fairy-tale question. She encountered the fatal, raging, cunning wolf in the woods and this time, she had chosen to stand up._

_Joan’s smile had broken her, drawn tight and worn thin, glossy lips curled. The umbrella fell either coincidentally or a part of the grand performance._

_“I am what I am,” she retorted with such finesse. “What I have done is for the benefit of the women… and yourself.”_

_She stepped forward. So did Vera._

_Vera was like an old toy: malleable, flawed, but still of use._

_Long, graceful hands reeled her in._ _Their hands twined together in a last-ditch effort. It felt familiar, it felt comforting. The cold of Joan’s body consumed that vicious, little Judas. Vera’s gaze met the swaying palm trees. She let out a strangled noise, forever an animal struggling underneath the claws of an apex predator._

_They reached an inconclusive armistice._

_Vera buried her face into the crook of Joan’s shoulder. She couldn’t see the way her predecessor winced, as if it came as an awful shock. Vera smelled smoke, amber, and vanilla. It reminded her of the changing seasons. Maybe Joan would open up, maybe Joan would trust her. Maybe, just maybe, she could hope for a brighter future for them…_

_The line sank with as much gravity as an anchor._

_Joan patted her loosely. She didn’t know how to soothe, how to sympathize, how to empathize._

_“I **do** care,” Joan began though her disciple cut her off abruptly. Her filed nails grazed rigid knuckles._

_“Don’t,” Vera began. “Don’t ever lie to me again.”_

_Silence washed over them until the tide began to nip at their heels._

Awarded crown and key, her life recoils only to uncoil again. Vera’s heart broke once. It yields to her flaws.

It’s all too heavy, it’s all too much.

_Do I deserve this? I must have chosen this life._

The wind whips at her and yanks at her shirt. She tugs the cotton fabric down before it has the chance to ride up her abdomen.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

A low, tired voice interrupts her memories along with an accompanying shadow. It’s Jake’s shadow that she expects to wash over her and to fuck her over again. Scorn leaves her bitter.

Vera doesn’t look back.

Guilt could easily burn them to ash.

“I thought you were someone else?”

Her reed thin voice cracks as if she’s been caught in a classroom scandal. Her beige shorts are damp. She peers at the bottom of the ocean, knowing that she’ll never get to the actual bottom. The fathomless depths scare her too much.

Having a minor struggle, she turns around.

This intruder is her bright, white day. He looks carved out of stone. He looks miserable, bloated in the face, and his Caesar's cut plasters to his forehead. He's aged because of Wentworth. Because of something else.

“Did you want me to be?” He asks.

Officer Will Jackson lends her a hand.

Governor Bennett hesitates.

_Yes._

His rough, calloused palm scratches hers. Despite all that’s been said and done, she wishes that her fingers were locked with death’s pale ones.

“... No.”

He leads her out of the water and onto the shore though it’s not the first time that someone has guided Vera along.

There’s work to be done.


End file.
